Hello Gordon Smith! You have your
work cut out for you. The FCC is now fully engaged in killing off broadcast
television, deploying its bureaucrats to get a feel for who might want to give
up their spectrum license for a cut of auction proceeds. This might not wash
with the guys on the NAB board, who are actual broadcasters (as if John McCain
would ever let it happen).

Debt holders are another story. Broadcast bankers might like the idea of a cash
payout for spectrum, and Washington clearly has no problem giving money to
banks.

The spectrum reclamation movement is in full flush, and as such, rife with
distortion.

The first and most persistent is that broadcasters get the spectrum for free.
They receive licenses in return for fulfilling public obligations, and in turn,
the public has access to free TV. The infrastructure to provide that service is
by no means free, nor was the recent government-mandated upgrade to digital
transmission. The billions just spent to create digital broadcasting was also
intended to free up spectrum, which it did--Chs. 52-69. Most of it, as
expected, went to Verizon and AT&T, and is not yet built out. Another 10
MHz hasn’t even been auctioned off.

Some of the pressure to give up spectrum is coming from the wireless giants,
who started the gambit. Verizon’s lobby in Washington is one of the most
powerful. It is second in influence only to Rupert Murdoch, who has to merely yawn
and stretch to get an administration to sit up and roll over.

Then Motorola got into the game, blaming the 9/11 deaths of first responders on
a dearth of spectrum. The loss of life was tragic, no doubt, but the spectrum argument
was disingenuous. Emergency communications had long suffered from incompatible
technology standards and disparate jargon. And on that fateful day, someone
failed to switch on a transmitter.

Now Google, Microsoft, Dell, et al, have skin in the game, and they’ve made the
Verizon team look like a bunch of geezers in seersucker slacks. Google did
nothing but pretend to bid on spectrum and got nationwide access to it for
free. Absolutely free. No strings attached. No public interest obligations.
Nothing. White space. Free.

If white-space broadband networks work properly without taking out TV signals,
most broadcasters are for it. Claudville, Va., is a perfect test bed. No
carrier was going to string Claudville, Va., at the foot of the Blue Ridge. It
will be interesting to see if people in the area experience TV interference,
and if they have any idea what might be causing it. Chances are, since
Claudville’s network just does backhaul in white space from fixed points, there
won’t be much of a problem.

But the launch itself will be held up by proponents as proof positive that
white-space devices work, bar none. The fox’s nose is in the door.

Broadcasters will have to be nimble in this environment. A head-on battle won’t
do. They’ll lose. Too many people get cable and satellite. The notion of
over-the-air television is a waste of spectrum to a generation that needs it for
texting in traffic. What truly is a “waste” of spectrum is arguable, of course.
If you’re a carrier or you have stock in one, not getting subscription fees
from spectrum is one form of waste. If you’re a tech giant or a stockholder,
it’s not having an operating system that rules the airwaves.

Why it is that Americans want to pay for something that ostensibly belongs to
them, I’ll never quite now. But that’s just a reflection of the press and the
blogosphere, which are one and the same these days. I’m not so sure that all of
America is really fine with the cessation of free TV for all time. The public
deserves to realize what’s really going on in Washington, D.C., and they
deserve to know that if broadcast TV goes away, it’s never coming back.

McAdams-
I agree with your comments regarding the socilazation of the airwaves (my words, not your's)and the fact the all of the air around us has become a profit center in which the FCC needs to produce results.
However, the first digital mandate was years ago and the corporations WITHIN our industry made sure that the initiative was floated into the murky water for a very long time so that they could reap billions from the retail space then known as "opportunistic bandwith".
These profits were used to fund mostly bad investments, which in turn allowed the over value by the Wall Street wizards of many of our industry's largest corporations balance sheets.
Your are correct, americans do not want to pay for something that obstensibly belongs to them. However, that brings us back to the arguments in the 70's regarding free airwaves for dish owners in rural areas of America outside of transmitter reach.
Who won then? Encryption - that's who. It's not who owns the air, it's who CONTROLS the air with technology.
I believe that we will never see the end of the Networks ressponsibility to provide free broadcast TV (no matter how limited it may be). But I do believe that "Mom and Pop" will have to shell out X number of dollars for the decoder box that makes it a viable alternative for the FCC to show management income/action for its branch of the government.
Tough times ahead? Absolutley.
Especially for "Mom and Pop" and the smaller Vendors in the industry.
Sad, but true.

The FAA’s current rules and proposed ban on flight over people, requirement of visual line of sight and restriction on nighttime flying, effectively prohibit broadcasters from using UAS for newsgathering. ~ WMUR-TV General Manager Jeff Bartlett